Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Robert Reich's Great Idea

In a Facebook post today, Robert Reich offers some great advice to Bernie Sanders' supporters:

A Hillary Clinton supporter writes: “By continuing your support of Bernie now that his odds of getting the nomination are almost nil, you're just hurting Hillary and helping Trump.”

A Bernie supporter writes: “How can you say you’ll work your heart out to get Hillary elected if she gets the Democratic nomination? I’ll never support Hillary. If Bernie forms a third party, I’m with him. Or else I’ll vote for the Green Party candidate.”

With due respect, let me explain why I think both of these positions are wrong. As I’ve said before, I believe Hillary Clinton is best qualified to be president of the political system we now have, and Bernie is best qualified to get the system we need.

So I urge you to fight like hell for Bernie as long as he has any chance at all. But if he loses the nomination, we must fight like hell for Hillary. Not voting, or voting for a third party candidate, helps Trump.

This doesn’t mean giving up on Bernie’s principles. Regardless of the outcome of this election, we must keep up the pressure to reclaim our democracy and our economy from the privileged and the powerful. How do we accomplish this? One possibility: Form a third party as soon as the election is over, and start planning for 2020.

10 comments:

Anonymous
said...

"But if he (Bernie) loses the nomination, we must fight like hell for Hillary" Eh?Trump trumps Hillary, anytime, by a wide margin.In any case 3-rd party, without low threshold PR would not unseat the establishment which is controlled banksters.Why do you think Banksterland also known as USA+Canada do not have PR?...

Funny you think a third party is a great idea considering your disdain for the NDP.

But in any case, a third party can't break the establishment stranglehold on a society unless that society has a democratic voting system. Or else the best the third party can hope for, if Canada is any example, is that the 'liberal' establishment party is forced to steal a few ideas from the third party which serves as the 'conscience of Parliament.' (Which is why Canada has universal healthcare and the US does not.)

Of course, stealing the odd progressive idea is not as good as the real thing. Canada is at the bottom of the class (along with the US among developed countries: see OECD Social Expenditure Database) in social spending. If Canada was a democracy, we would have at least mid-range social benefits.

Not surprisingly, Trudeau's government announced he's apparently following through on his electoral reform initiative today by forming a committee and reiterating his commitment to make 2015 the last caveman election; but no Progressive Blogger has even bothered to mention it.

This is the most fundamentally important issue to the future of our country, but activists and political junkies don't seem to care. This in the face of fierce opposition from the establishment news media. One can only hope Trudeau twists his own arm on this one. (If he does, he will certainly have earned his place in history.)

@ Anon - you are so many. My apparent disdain for the NDP is a relatively recent development that traces back to Layton's abandonment of the Left. I considered that a great disservice to Canada. I still do.

Were you not so dull you would grasp that, as a Green, I am not opposed to multi-party politics. But don't let me keep you from your tedium.

@ Anon - so many of you. You misapprehend my supposed disdain for the NDP. It has nothing to do with third parties but is anchored in the Layton/Mulcair abandonment of the Canadian Left which I consider a great disservice to the country and our people.

Were you not so dull you would appreciate that, as a Green, I'm not adverse to multi-party politics. Quite the opposite. I also support some form of electoral reform although I still have difficulty with the idea of appointed parliamentarians empowered to take decisions impacting my life.

As for the Americans I think a third party would be ideal to effect a generational and demographic re-alignment of democratic power.

|"Not surprisingly, Trudeau's government announced he's apparently following through on his electoral reform initiative today by forming a committee and reiterating his commitment to make 2015 the last caveman election; but no Progressive Blogger has even bothered to mention it."

That's because we are waiting to expose the Big Con that the Sunny Ways guy is going to pull off!

He will produce a Ranked ballot system, which games the system for the majority party and announce it as PR and then try to pull the wool over the eyes of a glazed population.

Ben, I'm a Green and yet I prefer some form of preferential balloting. I object to party-appointed MPs. The idea of someone who has not been chosen by the voters in a riding to me is unacceptable. We realize that New Dems don't much care about that and see PR as most favourable to their party and, hence, the best choice but they're just gaming the issue as should be expected.

However if you're looking to get indignant with Trudeau there doesn't seem to be any shortage of issue material.

Ben, I just wrote a dispiriting piece on neoliberalism that has dampened my enthusiasm for electoral reform. At the moment I'd prefer a new party, one of the left, centre and right, that would focus not on narrow, ideological differences but on something fundamental, the restoration of progressive democracy. Maybe we need what Reich advocates for his country, a new party to kick over the traces of our atrophied body politic.

Ben, I'm in the mood for a scrap. Take a look at the piece. Tell me if I'm wrong.